By Paul Sakkal
Copyright brisbanetimes
Australia’s anti-dumping watchdog has been ordered to work with the country’s intelligence agency to beef up its patrolling of illegal trade practices threatening smelters, steel production, critical minerals firms and the net zero transition amid rising trade tensions with China.
The move comes as mining giant BHP is locked in a stand-off with China’s state-owned iron ore trader which is trying to gain pricing power over Australian firms, putting at risk $100 billion worth of trade and spotlighting the interventionist trade practices increasingly used across the globe.
Industry Minister Tim Ayres today wrote to the Anti-Dumping Commission, which polices foreign efforts to undermine Australian industry by selling artificially cheap products here, with a fresh ministerial statement of expectations.
“The geostrategic environment you operate in has changed rapidly,” Ayres warned. Foreign tariffs, quotas and excess production were altering trade patterns and risking damaging competitive Australian companies,” Ayres wrote in the letter seen by this masthead.
